Papers by Matthias Buchecker
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 2013
Recent literature suggests that dialogic forms of risk communication are more effective to build ... more Recent literature suggests that dialogic forms of risk communication are more effective to build stakeholders' hazard-related social capacities. In spite of the high theoretical expectations, there is a lack of univocal empirical evidence on the relevance of these effects. This is mainly due to the methodological limitations of the existing evaluation approaches. In our paper we aim at eliciting the contribution of participatory river revitalisation projects on stakeholders' social capacity building by triangulating the findings of three evaluation studies that were based on different approaches: a field-experimental, a qualitative long-term expost and a cross-sectional household survey approach. The results revealed that social learning and avoiding the loss of trust were more relevant benefits of participatory flood management than acceptance building. The results suggest that stakeholder involvements should be more explicitly designed as tools for long-term social learning.
Natural Hazards, 2012
Although both improved risk communication and the building of social capacities have been advocat... more Although both improved risk communication and the building of social capacities have been advocated as vital ways to increase societies' resilience towards natural hazards across the world, the literature has rarely examined the ways in which these two concepts may integrate in theory and practice. This paper is an attempt to address this gap in a European context. It begins with a conceptual discussion that unites the literature on risk communication with the literature on social capacity building. We then use the insights from this discussion as a basis to conduct a review of 60 risk communication practices from across Europe. This review indicates a gap between theory and practice because, whilst the literature highlights the importance of integrated and coordinated communication campaigns featuring both a one-way transfer and a two-way dialogue between the public, stakeholders and decision-makers, the majority of the communication practices reviewed here appear to be relatively disparate initiatives that rely on one-way forms of communication. On the basis of these findings, we conclude by making some recommendations for the way in which such practices could be improved in order to be more supportive of social capacities across Europe.
Journal of Environmental Management, 2013
Participatory planning that includes interest groups and municipal representatives has been prese... more Participatory planning that includes interest groups and municipal representatives has been presented as a means to deal with the increasing difficulty to reach arrangements due to progressively scarce land resources. Under dispute is whether collaborative forms of planning augment social capital or whether they might actually cause the destruction of such a valuable social commodity. In this paper we focus on trust in institution as a specific dimension of social capital because we argue that this is one of the effects the convenors of such participatory planning procedures are most interested in. We pursue a pre-post design and survey advisory group members of five ongoing river-related planning processes in Switzerland. Controlling for generalised trust, we investigate how trust in institutions is affected over time by the quality of such processes and the degree of participation they offer. We find that generalised trust is highly correlated with initial levels of trust and so is process quality. Particularly the latter finding challenges the usually assumed direction of causality according to which process quality influences trust building. Additionally, we find a positive (non-significant) effect of process quality on changes in trust, while a higher degree of participation rather seems to hinder trust building. We suppose this indicates that under the conditions of limited time and resources more attention should be paid to how to improve the quality of participatory processes than putting much effort in increasing the degree of participation.
European Journal of Forest Research, 2012
Participatory approaches and computerised tools such as decision support systems (DSS) represent ... more Participatory approaches and computerised tools such as decision support systems (DSS) represent conflicting tendencies in state-of the-art sustainable forest management. As a result, there may be considerable tension between these two developments in practice. The objective of this paper is to explore how participatory approaches and DSS could be brought together to improve planning processes and to explore how DSS could be adapted in their use or combined with other tools to enable successful participatory planning. From a review of the literature, we identified criteria related to successful participatory planning. From these criteria, we selected those a DSS can influence and created a short list of the criteria that could be used to evaluate participatory processes where DSS are applied. The evaluation criteria with particular relevance for DSS that we identified are as follows: fairness, opportunity to influence outcome, quality and selection of information, cost-effectiveness, challenging status quo and fostering creative thinking, structured decision-making process, transparency, and independence and neutrality of process. We also scrutinised existing forest DSS and identified features that may enable DSS to address these criteria. The features of DSS we identified that may support participatory processes are as follows: group decision support, possibilities to include other values than timber production, flexibility of system to include non-traditional forest data and management options, and multi-criteria decision analysis tools. We argue that the DSS to be used should be assessed to clarify, how it can be used in the specific planning situation and how it should be complemented with other available and non-computerised tools. Communicated by M. Moog.
Environmental Science & Policy, 2011
Ecology and Society, 2013
The need for social-ecological systems to become more adaptive is widely acknowledged. Social eff... more The need for social-ecological systems to become more adaptive is widely acknowledged. Social effects generated by participatory planning have been claimed to contribute to this transformation, but little empirical evidence is available that backs up or opposes this notion. We aimed to offer some insights regarding questions as to which social effects are formed in participatory planning processes and at what costs, and to then discuss their contribution to the transformation toward more adaptive social-ecological systems based on empirical evidence. Consequently, we investigated the social effects of participatory planning processes, including the social learning processes leading to them. We conducted semistructured interviews with members of advisory groups involved in river engineering projects in Switzerland. Our results indicate that participatory planning processes can somewhat contribute to maintaining and spreading knowledge and social capital among individuals in a planning group, and this may help them collectively deal with new and complex challenges. However, it is costly in terms of time and patience to build up ecological knowledge, communicative capacities, and trust, with the latter also eroding over time. Overall, we conclude that the contribution of participatory planning via positive social outcomes to the transformation toward adaptive capacity social-ecological systems is smaller than optimists might hope. However, other forms of planning very likely result in no social effects or even the destruction of social capital. Participatory planning, in contrast, can offer the conditions for relational and cognitive learning contributing to the maintenance of social and political capital. Based on our results, we suggest shifting resources from technical to communicative aspects of planning processes and implementations. We recommend that project leaders provide stakeholders with firsthand information about projects, explain rationales and data behind decisions, and clearly communicate that stakeholders do not have decision making competence to support participants in finding their roles in similar participatory planning settings.
Modelling and simulating the movement of humans during outdoor nearby recreational activities can... more Modelling and simulating the movement of humans during outdoor nearby recreational activities can deliver important insight into the landscape services available to people in urbanized areas. Recreational activities such as walking, jogging and cycling are known to have a positive effect on people’s mental and physical health, however in urban areas access to nearby recreation areas is sometimes lacking, under-developed or impeded by man-made infrastructures. In this context, understanding the spatial behaviour of humans during outdoor recreation is a crucial step towards implementing improvement measures. In this paper, we investigated the recreation strategies of multiple individuals and the flow in the movements of these individuals using a spatially-explicit agent-based model. The model combined information on the available infrastructures (roads, housing areas), the recreational potential of the landscape and rule-based movement strategies mimicking recreationists decision-maki...
Fur viele Landschaftsschutzer, aber auch fur weite Bevolkerungsteile gilt die traditionelle Kultu... more Fur viele Landschaftsschutzer, aber auch fur weite Bevolkerungsteile gilt die traditionelle Kulturlandschaft als der Idealzustand einer Landschaft. Es ware jedoch weder machbar noch sinnvoll, die traditionelle Kulturlandschaft integral zu erhalten oder wieder herzustellen. Aus sozialwissenschaftlicher Sicht ware es hingegen wichtig, die direkten Nutzungs- und Einflussmoglichkeiten der lokalen Bevolkerung auf ihre Landschaft wiederherzustellen. Diese zentrale Qualitat der Landschaft war insbesondere im kollektiven Teil der Landschaft ‐ der Allmend ‐ erfullt. In aktualisierter Weise liesse sich diese Qualitat heute wieder herstellen, indem neue Moglichkeiten der partizipativen Landschaftsentwicklung gefordert wurden. Fur diese neue Strategie des Landschaftsschutzes bieten die periurbanen Gebiete nach unseren Untersuchungen besonders gunstige Voraussetzungen, weil die Bewohner dort eine besonders starke individuelle Partizipationsbereitschaft entwickelt haben.
Many scholars have argued that participatory tools designed around people's site preferences ... more Many scholars have argued that participatory tools designed around people's site preferences for renewable energy infrastructure require capturing the invisible and often intangible associations that people hold for places. In this study we propose that mapping meaningful places may be a suitable participatory tool to capture such associations. The notion of meaningful places is related to the concept of sense of place; however, it can be considered as more fluid and, therefore, may better depict not only the relationships that people have to places, but also the discourses that influence how technology-fit is perceived. To test whether the mapping of meaningful places is feasible for the planning of renewable energy projects, we mapped the meaningful places, using interviews and PPGIS, of people with pro, contra and indifferent attitudes towards three ongoing wind energy projects situated in different planning and spatial contexts of Switzerland. Based on the verbal and spatial...
Flood protection in Zurich: an empirical study on communicating risk During the last decade, most... more Flood protection in Zurich: an empirical study on communicating risk During the last decade, most European countries have produced risk maps of natural hazards, but little is known so far about how to communicate these maps most efficiently to the public. In October 2011, Zurich’s local authorities sent official letters to the owners of buildings located in the urban flood hazard area, containing information on potential flood damage, the probability of flood events, constructional safety measures, and guidelines for taking appropriate action should flooding occur. Owners were also encouraged in the covering letter to identify the location of their property within the hazard area using a GIS-based online risk map. The campaign was based on the assumptions that informing citizens increases their risk awareness and that citizens who are aware of risks are more likely to undertake actions to protect themselves and their property. There is, however, little empirical evidence about the e...
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Papers by Matthias Buchecker